He said, “I hacked into Dr Remengi’s Twitter account and I used it to chat with Abiola while posing as Remengi, but I didn’t extort any money from her. What happened was that somebody sent a link to me, which he used to hack my Twitter account. I suspected that Abiola must have sent the link to me because immediately I clicked on it, I couldn’t access my account again.

“So I hacked into Remengi’s account and pretended to be him while chatting with Abiola. I can no longer access my PayPal account, where I have $700 which I wanted to use to rent an apartment.”

Nzube, a barber, claimed that he generated the money in his PayPal account from marketing health products online.

The Force Public Relations Officer, Olabisi Kolawole, said Abiola petitioned the Inspector-General of Police, Solomon Arase, on December 1, 2015, after Nzube attempted to extort money from her.

She said, “On the strength of the petition, detectives assigned to carry out investigation into the case found out that the suspect fraudulently fabricated a story using his professional knowledge in computer applications to design a human skull, attached same to the photograph of the complainant and created a web page with Vanguard newspapers media logo, which he used to blackmail the petitioner internationally.”

According to her, the suspect confessed to have blackmailed several suspects locally and internationally “among who are Prof. Toyin Ajao, a lecturer at the University of Pretoria, South Africa; Senator Raji Rauf, and Sam Kurk of England.”

Kolawole advised Nigeriansto be diligent in keeping their social accounts passwords to avoid falling prey to Internet fraudsters.